Char Atra, an island of seven towns and 10,000 people in the middle of the Ganges, is experiencing ever more serious flooding due to climate change. Oxfam has been active in the area for a decade or so, working in particular with local women (the men, most of whom are fishermen, are away for months at a time) to help them prepare for the monsoon and ensuing annual flood. They learn, Hewlett explains, how to raise their homes on a clay base (maybe a foot a year or so, if they can afford to), how to store food and firewood and other essentials on a wooden platform above their beds to keep it dry, how to save a little money, and how to rebuild.

As suggested by the title Creativity Moves the City, creativity has the power to generate new urban dynamism and values as well as civic consciousness. Led by this conviction, the City of Yokohama has been an innovator in developing and promoting Creative City initiatives in Japan. Through the organization of this major international conference, the City of Yokohama hopes to bring its cultural policy one step further by addressing the challenges faced by other cities in Japan and overseas. The Conference will also provide networking opportunities for those promoting Creative City initiatives locally and internationally.

A project led by cultural anthropologist, Satoshi Nakajima. Its focus is on bricolage and flâneur as fundamental acts of creation that are common to art and anthropology. Although dominated by unconsciousness, purposelessness and illogicality, they are still considered to be acts that produce “something”. In other words, the objective of this project is to rescue “originality” once again from acts that completely lack intention or purpose, rationality or functionality, or any semiotic or commercial nature. Consequently, there are numerous non-professional “amateurs” participating in the project, and the fact that the digital camera is serving as an important tool in the project is of great interest. A tradition of “images” that has tied together the unconscious nature of originality since the invention of photography has an unmistakable presence in this project.

Graffiti Research Lab(GRL) is a project founded by James Powderly and Evan Roth. Graffiti is neither mere scribble on a wall, nor is it a particular style of mural. Graffiti reveals a person’s individuality in a visual form in a communal space and utilizes but at the same time deviates from the distribution circuit of commercial symbols = signboards. In this sense, spray cans are not required for graffiti, nor is any highly refined skill. The devices produced by GRL are open source, and therefore anyone (even you!) can appear in a public space as an independent and unique human being. That has the function of turning graffiti, not into a taste of image, but into an issue of attitude.

Pauline Oltheten continues to examine the taking of photographs and photographs themselves. All her photographs contain people’s mannerisms, behaviors or the taking of exercise in a public space such as on the street or in a park, and as she minutely dissects them from her own unique perspective, minute movements begin to take on a new meaning. The cycle of “this shot = thought = creation of meaning” is never-ending, and as such, does not produce “artworks.” What Oltheten presents us is the endless process itself. What is recognizable in that is a unique technological system for seeing the world through images.